This Big Picture essay wraps up our month-long special report on the Mobile Enterprise. Starting tomorrow, the entire report will be available only as a premium publication (in PDF format) for those who pay to receive it.

Today's mobile device is the new personal computer. The average smart phone is as powerful as a high-end Mac or PC of less than a decade ago. And as billions of people worldwide rely on these ultra-compact machines for more and more tasks, the mobile device might qualify as humankind's primary tool.

TwinStrata, Inc., the leading innovator in data protection and iSCSI cloud storage solutions, has integrated Scality's RING storage platform into its family of CloudArray virtual and physical appliances. With the addition of Scality integration, CloudArray customers can now easily choose and deploy either a private cloud environment or connect with internationally available public cloud providers powered by Scality RING and receive off-site data protection and disaster recovery capabilities on a "plug-and-play" basis.

TwinStrata's CloudArray's "like local" performance, control, and policy-driven automation enables Scality customers to leverage the on-demand elasticity and adaptability of Scality's RING cloud storage through innovative asynchronous replication, in-cloud snapshots, dynamic caching, in-flight and at-rest encryption, compression, iSCSI, and continuous access to and control of data in the cloud. In the event of a disruption or an outage, data can be rapidly restored on-site, off-site, or in the cloud, providing secure, anywhere, anytime application and data accessibility...

There is less than a week remaining to book one of the limited places left at the Mobile Cloud Computing Forum – www.mobilecloudcomputingforum.com – taking place next Wednesday 1st December at RIBA, London.

The highly anticipated 1 day conference and exhibition will include an overview of the Mobile Cloud Computing Proposition and Marketplace, Mobile Cloud and Enterprise Applications, The Challenges for the Mobile Cloud and The Future of Mobile.

Cloud computing is being recognised as a key technology for the future by a growing number of businesses.

According to research carried out by Frost & Sullivan, around 25 per cent of enterprises are currently employing cloud computing solutions in some form, with 61 per cent planning to increase their use of the service during 2011.

Arun Chandrasekaran, research manager at Frost & Sullivan, said the technology is attracting the attention of IT decision makers, who realise its potential benefits.

The Frost & Sullivan survey, carried out in August and September, also revealed that 23 percent of respondents use some form of cloud computing, while 61 percent plan to increase spending on it next year.

About 330 senior IT managers participated in the survey.

The research firm said these results indicated that most companies have either initiated discussions or have already started using cloud computing despite it being labeled as another "vaporware".

"A cloud without robust data protection is not the sort of cloud we need. So these features should be well-integrated in the design of cloud-computing products and services, from the very beginning of the business processes," Kroes said on Thursday in a speech at the Les Assises du Numerique conference in Paris.

Data protection standards must also be transnational, she added, noting that "the free movement of personal data within the EU is another way to complete the digital single market in Europe".

Most enterprise executives find the idea of the private cloud very appealing. After all, what’s not to like about enjoying all that scalability and flexibility within your own firewall.

But there’s a growing chorus of voices arguing that the economics of the private cloud do not work. Not only are most enterprises too small to see any real benefit to manning their own clouds, but the security and reliability fears surrounding the much more cost-effective public cloud are overblown. Private clouds, therefore, entail all the costs of traditional infrastructure but deliver none of the benefits.

Many insurance companies could benefit from using software-as-a-service solutions inside their organisation.

This is the opinion of Benjamin Moreland, a senior analyst at Celent, who told Information Management now is the time for many businesses working in the field to seriously consider making use of such offerings.

"You can no longer delude yourself into thinking you can do IT solutions better than any software-as-a-service vendor, especially into today's market where utilisation, agility [and] speed to market … are key business drivers," he stated.